


The Taste of Almonds

by cthulhu_has_chaotic_stories (cthulhu_is_chaotic_good)



Category: Alex Rider - Fandom
Genre: Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Gen, Imprisonment, cyanide capsule
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27906778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cthulhu_is_chaotic_good/pseuds/cthulhu_has_chaotic_stories
Summary: Gadgets were the one thing Alex looked forward to for his missions. Not only because he got to see Smithers but because they always seemed to save his life. Even long after Smithers has retired, Alex looks forward to the new gadgets MI6 gives him. He never expected to get one that would end it. And when he was given such a device, Alex hoped that he would never have to use it. He should have known the day would come when it would come into play.
Comments: 64
Kudos: 91





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mobilisinmobili](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mobilisinmobili/gifts), [mesenchyme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mesenchyme/gifts), [Ireliss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ireliss/gifts), [TheInverseUniverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheInverseUniverse/gifts), [Rirren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rirren/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I wrote this story, but the ideas aren’t mine. Every idea in the beginning of this story is from the fantastic people known as Rirren, TheInverseUniverse, Ireliss, Mesenchyme, and Mobilisinmobili – almost the entirely of the first part of this story comes from their plotting on Discord, and I have merely written it down in the version I can most imagine. 
> 
> Thank you so much in addition to TheInverseUniverse as well for feedback, for Valaks for help with the plot summary, and to Ireliss for help with tags.

Innovations in warfare and espionage during World War II impacted the world forever, as Alex had learned during the courses MI6 had put him through after he passed his A-levels, and entered the service on a more permanent basis. He’d learned about those innovations with a sort of horrified interest, making note of the many ways that nations had attempted to limit so many innovations through international treaties and organizations post the war’s end. The spying world alone had come up with many viciously clever devices just to defeat the other side.

Among the innovations developed by the British and American secret services was the L-pill: a small capsule filled with potassium cyanide, often shaped as a false tooth, and placed in the mouth of an agent carrying secrets. If the agent was in distress, all they needed to do was bite down on the pill. The poison inside would be released, stopping the agent’s heartbeat within minutes.

Alex would have wondered, when he learned about the L-pill, about what sort of fate agents feared to bite down on the pill. Except he didn’t have to wonder. He had intimate experience with the depraved tortures that could be wrought on agents working with an agenda counter to their captors.

What he hadn’t expected, when learning about that pill, was that one day he would be expected to have one fitted into his mouth.

“No,” he’d said, when Jones had told him the necessity of the information he was to be carrying in his next mission, and her requirement that he not be taken alive. “No. Get someone else. I won’t do it.”

Jones hadn’t given him a choice.

It was this mission, or he was done – if Alex wouldn’t work with the missions he was given, they had no use for him – and where would Alex _go_ if MI6 couldn’t use his help? What would he do with his life? There was no one left who he could go to with his problems, not really, and no one left to get him on his feet if MI6 let him go. Jones knew that and took advantage of Alex’s need to have use, and Alex knew she knew he was aware of the fact.

Worse still, Alex knew too much, and the probability was higher than zero that if he left MI6, his freedom would only last a short while before he disappeared one night and was never heard from again. Disappearing into a hole in the country he’d served since he was 14, only to emerge if – and when – he agreed to their terms seemed a fitting end for his life.

He’d said yes, in the end. There was no other option he could take. He would succeed in this mission. They would take the pill out of his mouth. And he would have saved a country from potential nuclear fallout, again.

_And Alex had shoved away the thought that next time Jones wanted him to kill himself instead of revealing information, she would make him put the capsule back in his mouth and he would say yes again because the alternatives weren’t ones he would ever choose._

Alex had taken the mission, fake tooth snug in place, and he’d passed along the information he’d been given to the agents of the nation the United Kingdom was aiding. He’d almost been home free.

The private airfield was supposed to be secure. The plane had been ready. Alex had been about to go home.

It spoke to a betrayal from a source close to MI that SCORPIA had arrived, guns blazing, just before the pilot started the take-off procedures.

It was bad luck that Alex still had the pill in his mouth.

It was cowardice that Alex didn’t bite down even after everyone else was dead, and the menacing presence of Yassen and his men loomed over the row where Alex crouched, cowering, after his gun ran out of bullets.

“You’re going to tell me what you know,” Yassen had told him, calmly, and Alex _knew_ Jones expected him to bite down before SCORPIA could extract the information from him. All those other times in the past that MI6 hadn’t cared to rescue Alex from torture or near death, it had been because Alex was no more use to them. They hadn’t trusted him with dangerous information that could hurt MI6 or their allies, not when he was 14 or 15 or 19.

Alex didn’t want to die at twenty.

“No, I’m not,” Alex had protested, knowing his words were futile, before a SCORPIA goon had knelt to grab Alex and shove him up and after Yassen, down to the tarmac and into a car.

If it was cowardice that had kept Alex from biting down on the pill, it was an ill -timed accident that had led to what happened next.

The goon had shoved Alex into the car. Alex’s head had banged against the hard metal of the doorframe and Alex, surprised, had bitten down.

Alex had spit out what was left of the pill, his face growing pale. And Yassen had seen, and reached for him, asking – desperately, more desperate than Alex had ever seen the man - _what he’d done_ , and that was the last Alex remembered before he’d blacked out.

\--

They’d taken him to SCORPIA. Alex drifted awake, tired, oh so tired, to feel himself strapped down to a bed by padded yet secured bands.

The bands didn’t matter. He didn’t have the energy to move, let alone speak.

MI6 would be delighted. SCORPIA could ask all they wanted, and Alex couldn’t say anything, because it hurt to think and it hurt to feel the straps on his skin and he could only barely open his eyes, and he was so tired that even the hand on his forehead barely registered – but it hurt – and Alex closed his eyes again to the pain of Yassen brushing his hair back from his face.

\--

They asked him questions. Several people asked all sorts of questions while Alex barely clung to life and couldn’t answer even if he wanted. They told him to blink once for yes and twice for no, and Alex kept his eyes closed while his head throbbed, and life drained from his body as IVs attempted to push the life back in.

They hurt him when he didn’t respond. A previous Alex wouldn’t have recognized the hurt – these men tortured him with the smallest of sensations -but in his head it was agony. A pinch was the same as a whip cracking against his arm. The trickle of a knife against the underside of his exposed foot was the same as a knife dragging into his skin and causing excruciating pain. And Yassen telling them to stop, that he’d had enough, that he would be more use to them awake and alive and not in pain, was another level of agony because the argument only rung in Alex’s head as he contended with a migraine and the existence of the words reminded him that he’d been too much of a coward to put an end to this before it began and that had only made things worse.

He couldn’t scream but he could cry.

\--

They stop asking questions after Alex did what they all knew he would do eventually, and answered their questions with blinks and – his first word in forever- a harsh, whispered ‘ _I don’t know.’_ The answer strained his throat enough to stop Alex from talking again, but he answered the rest of their questions to the best of his ability in three sessions where they hurt him only a little and his heart almost doesn’t feel like it’s about to rip out of his chest. And after that he thought SCORPIA would kill him, but Yassen was there – _Yassen was always there, looking at Alex as if the man had seen a ghost_ – and instead, they left him be, as Yassen sat beside him and told him stories of a man far braver than Alex.

\--

SCORPIA was gone and it was only doctors, occasionally, and Yassen, always, that remained. Alex stayed strapped to the bed, lingering in the painful world of light and the nearly dreamless slumber of the dead. And when he was awake, Yassen sometimes talked.

Yassen told him of John and Hunter, the two sides of the man that Yassen had seen – although John he saw infrequently, and Hunter often. The man told Alex about food he’d eaten in Russia in his childhood, and a few places he’d seen around the world.

Once, Yassen apologized, speaking in a soft, almost kind voice, and said that Alex didn’t deserve to be here.

Alex had the impression that Yassen had told a lot more than Alex could recall, although none of it was information that Alex could use to escape, assuming he hadn’t been weak, and always tired, and strapped to a bed, and unable to drink or eat or get up.

Finally, the Russian told him, during one of the times that Alex was awake long enough to hear and remember the one-man conversations Yassen was holding with him, that he would be leaving soon for another job. Yassen had been drinking that time – not a lot, Alex thought, but he could smell vodka – and then Yassen told Alex more about his early life in Estrov than Alex should know, and – in a now familiar gesture – brushed Alex’s hair out of his face, and left.

\--

Yassen didn’t come back for several weeks. The time passed slowly, as Alex began to regain longer periods of consciousness and control over his body. Doctor M. and Nurse Sun helped him more than Alex would care to admit. And all the while Alex knew that he was probably considered dead by now, and MI6 wouldn’t be looking for him, and SCORPIA had him where they wanted him. Alex could now take three or four steps before he started to fall – although Nurse Sun usually caught him – and it didn’t pain his throat so much to talk.

When Alex could speak in full sentences, he asked Nurse Sun, knowing it was futile, “Can I call my family?”

She had smiled politely and told Alex that his speech was coming along well.

\--

Alex was sitting in bed, trying to stay awake while staring blankly at the copy of The Count of Monte Cristo that he’d been allowed to read through, when Yassen entered the room.

Yassen looked at him, and offered a half smile. “You’re looking better.”

Yes, Alex would admit to himself, he was doing better than the days when he’d been strapped into bed with IVs poking into him while he could barely open his eyes. That didn’t mean he was _better._

Yassen had been sitting beside Alex for ages, but Alex had barely been able to turn his head earlier. He hadn’t really seen the man so much as heard him. All the same, Yassen appeared to be doing well. He had to be forty by now, but he looked as if he were in his thirties, with his close-cropped blond hair, calm expression, and dancer-like body.

“I’m alive.”

He wanted to go home.

SCORPIA wasn’t going to let him run back to MI6, not without a fight. In an earlier life, before the cyanide capsule that Jones had forced upon him, Alex had been more than a thorn in SCORPIA’s side. And now, if he regained his strength, he would continue to be one. They had to know that. SCORPIA would have every reason to keep him here.

“Can I call a friend?” Alex asked.

Yassen didn’t seem surprised that he was talking now. The man looked at him intently, and then shook his head. “I think you know that will not happen.”

Yes, Alex had known it wouldn’t happen. It didn’t mean he couldn’t ask.

It wasn’t as if there was anyone to really call, anyway. Tom would be awkward, but pick up and speak for a bit. Alex couldn’t admit any of the truth of his situation to Tom. Jack would be desperate to talk, but hurt if she knew the situation. No one else would be liable to pick up a strange number.

“Why am I still here?” Alex asked instead, aware that his voice sounded injured, and aware that the answer could hurt him.

What little of a smile had been on Yassen’s face disappeared. “You will be here a while longer. You’re still recovering.”

Alex didn’t want to ask, but he did. “And then what?”

SCORPIA was never going to let Alex run back to MI6 without a fight. Frankly, it was a miracle – otherwise known as Yassen’s intervention – that he was still alive now that he had no new information to give.

Yassen seemed to know Alex wouldn’t be happy. “Let me take a seat.” Alex watched as Yassen took the familiar chair next to this hospital bed. “I signed a contract for your life,” Yassen said, after a moment of examining Alex.

“What does that mean?”

“I had been about to retire. SCORPIA knew this. And they had been about to let me, until the situation changed.”

Until Alex had nearly died, Yassen meant.

“I signed a new contract.”

The same pain that had been present in Alex’s life for weeks started to take over his head again. He knew this wouldn’t end well. He asked, afraid of the answer, “What contract?”

“SCORPIA will leave you alive. You’ll be safe, so long as I am working for them.”

Alex didn’t say anything. He watched Yassen, waiting for the hammer to fall.

“You’ll be safe,” Yassen reassured.

“They’re not going to let me go.” Alex spoke with a certainty that came from his entire twenty years of experience – twenty years of life lived in too much proximity to criminal organizations. “They have me. They’re not going to let me free.”

“No,” Yassen admitted. “But you will be safe.”

Alex didn’t want to be safe. He wanted to be home.

“I’m not going to stay here,” Alex promised, wretched, knowing he couldn’t just escape in the condition he was in. Today he’d barely lasted five steps across the floor on his own.

Yassen was quiet.

“I won’t,” Alex said, feeling the tears stinging the corners of his eyes. “I won’t do this anymore, please. Just let me go.”

Yassen spoke slowly, seeming to choose his words with care. “That can’t happen. You’re too much of a risk to an organization that is still recovering from you.”

“Please,” Alex repeated, knowing this wasn’t his day to win this fight. “ _Please.”_

Yassen shook his head, slowly. “That isn’t a choice.”

Alex couldn’t stop the hot tears from trickling down his face that night.

\--

He was moved to a new room soon after that. They blindfolded him after he was seated in the wheelchair that they moved him in, and his hands were tied to the armrests, so he couldn’t see the way and couldn’t fight with the meager strength he had regained. When his blindfold was removed, he was in a gilded prison.

The room was spacious, and welcoming. The bed was a king, with a large television mounted to the wall across from it. There was a bookshelf filled with books – almost all in English – next to a mini-fridge that had a bowl of candy on top. A desk with a notebook and a gold pen was at the other edge of the room. A treadmill was against one wall. The room had an attached, and quite large, bathroom.

The room was still a prison.

“I hate you,” Alex said quietly the first time Yassen visited him. The words weren’t nearly as true as he wanted them to be.

“They’ll kill you without me,” Yassen said in response.

Alex wasn’t sure which one he despised more – the idea of staying stuck in this room while Yassen hurt others for money, or the idea of being dead.

Yassen left again soon after that.

\--

Alex knew he had his share of enemies within SCORPIA. While Yassen had been there, quietly contributing his protection to Alex, it hadn’t worried him – not much, anyway. Now that Yassen was gone, Alex worried.

Nurse Sun still brought his medicine every day, but now she was escorted by a tall man who appeared to be in his thirties. He was old enough to have been with SCORPIA when a younger Alex had taken them on, and he smiled maliciously at Alex the entire time he was in the room every day.

It took all of Alex’s courage to take his medicine every day, knowing that the tall man could have laced his medicine with more poison than had already affected Alex’s system. The tall man seemed to know this. His smile grew wider as Alex opened a new bottle of water every day to choke the pills down with.

Every day at noon, that same tall man appeared and held Alex’s arm as he walked down a long hall to physiotherapy. It took close to a half hour each day for Alex to struggle down the hall, stopping occasionally to focus on his breathing as he allowed the dizziness in his head to fade away. The tall man wouldn’t disguise his amusement as Alex reached a hand for the wall to steady himself, but the man didn’t say anything. He never said anything.

The man who led his physiotherapy, Moon, acted kind enough. He would walk Alex through exercises, praising him well when Alex showed improvement.

One of SCORPIA’s newer recruits began to visit Alex every day for an hour after he’d had a chance to rest post-physiotherapy. His name was Jin and he was Alex’s age. He was from China, and he talked of his village fondly, to which Alex would respond sarcastically or not at all. He knew it was SCORPIA attempting to manipulate him – attempting to force a connection between a young man that was Alex’s age and Alex himself.

“Did you eat?” Jin would ask each day. Alex would ignore the question, knowing that Jin knew Alex’s meals arrived at the same time each day, brought by the quiet woman who ignored Alex’s presence, and yes, Alex usually ate.

Jin would then go on to talk about his day training in weaponry or world history. One day he asked Alex, “Did you know about the torture report released by the CIA?”

“Yes,” Alex had answered, not keen to admit that he’d been party to one of the CIA’s interrogation methods himself.

“How do you work for those people?” Jin had followed up.

“How do you?” Alex retorted, before falling silent once again.

Another day, Jin brought Alex a book on torture, written by an apprentice to Doctor Three. “We read this in class today.”

“I don’t care,” Alex had said, although he cared enough to know he wouldn’t be reading the book. Not if other options for distraction would continue to be offered.

“The most recent study in the book was by someone you met in Egypt,” Jin had said, referring, Alex assumed, to Razim.

“Good for Doctor Three’s apprentice.”

Jin tried to interest Alex in the study for a period, and Alex stared at a wall until it was time for Jin to leave.

\--

“Are we at a new version of Malagosto?” Alex asked Yassen when he was back from his latest assignment.

“Why do you think that?”

“Jin can’t be any older than me. And he’s training every day.” Alex had other reasons as well, such as the presence of a fully functional hospital inside whatever compound they were in.

Yassen’s silence was answer enough.

“Where are we?”

“If you don’t know, you don’t need to know.”

“It’s air conditioned, so somewhere hot?” Alex guessed. He wasn’t sure, of course. There were no windows anywhere that he had been in so far, which was standard protocol for a secured compound. But it left him feeling trapped and uncertain as to where he was.

“Sure,” Yassen agreed.

Alex bit his lip and refused to beg for where they were. “Can I do anything to go home?” he asked after a moment of silence, while Yassen watched the show Alex was watching with feigned interest.

“No,” Yassen dismissed. “You’re safe. Focus on that.”

“What if you fail your next assignment?” Alex asked, heart heavy in his stomach.

“That won’t happen.”

“They’ll kill me.” Alex was certain about that. The nightmares that kept him up at night – when he didn’t fall into a deep and long sleep – reminded him of his uncertain position here.

Yassen reached for Alex’s shoulder and squeezed in a way that Alex supposed Yassen thought would comfort him. “You will be fine.”

“I just want to be able to choose what I’m going to eat for dinner,” Alex said. _Please let me go home._

“Tell them what you want to eat for dinner,” Yassen responded, missing the point completely. Alex couldn’t tell if the point was missed on purpose.

“I want to hike.”

“You’re walking more. Perhaps that will be possible soon.”

“I want to go to sleep in my own bed.” _I want to be free._

Yassen exhaled, and considered Alex calmly. “You’re alive to sleep in a bed. That’s a gift you shouldn’t take lightly.”

\--

Yassen was gone, this time, after only a day. Alex was almost well enough to walk on the treadmill in his room for ten minutes – while clutching the rails and going an entire one mile an hour - before collapsing into bed. Alex could carry out conversations without wanting to die. The problem was, he didn’t want to live like this, either.

Alex set to work on Jin. He began to engage in every conversation eagerly, without sarcasm, being almost honest with his experiences.

It took five days to get to a point where Alex could mention that he needed to call his almost-sister without feeling that Jin would report him immediately.

Two days after that, Jin brought Alex a phone.

“I’ll listen in,” Jin warned. “You’re just saying you’re alive, and that you wish her well. That’s it.”

“Is that alright with your supervisors?” Alex asked, hoping that this would show he was being compliant and not tip Jin off to realizing that letting Alex make a call was almost certainly a mistake.

“Yes,” Jin agreed. Alex couldn’t tell if Jin was lying.

“Alright,” Alex said, and dialed Jones.

“This is Alex Rider,” Alex said into the phone, after Jones picked up and was silent on the other end. “I’m just calling Jack to tell her I’m alright.”

“Alex!” Jones responded. “I thought you were dead.”

“SCORPIA has me. They’re using me as a hostage,” Alex said, watching Jin turn pale and hoping Jones believed him. Alex had been gone for a while, after all, and now was calling to accuse SCORPIA of using him. If he was Jones, he’d be dubious. _But he wasn’t Jones, and as the world worked, SCORPIA was only barely worse than MI6, but Alex was addicted to danger enough to help one side that put him in danger with a method to kill himself._

Jin reached for the phone while Alex ducked back, against the bed. “I want to go home,” Alex pleaded.

“I need more information,” Jones said, her voice now hard. “This phone call is awfully convenient, after you’ve been silent for months.”

Jin snatched the phone from his hand before Alex could respond.

“No, don’t!” Alex begged as Jin ended the call.

“That wasn’t to a friend,” Jin accused, staring at Alex as if he’d been personally betrayed.

There was no more point in lying. And Alex was too tired to lie, besides. “I’m a spy. I don’t have friends.”

Jin didn’t return to Alex’s prison after that day.

\--

Yassen heard about the phone call the day he arrives back at the compound. He was told about the student’s failure in giving Alex a phone call, and that it was his job to make sure nothing similar happened again.

Alex was napping when Yassen arrived in his room. Yassen waited for the boy – now young man – to wake. He’d waited often enough on Alex in the past months; this was not a new hardship.

Alex woke quietly. One moment he was asleep and the next he grimaced and cracked his eyes open.

“Good afternoon,” Yassen said.

Alex inhaled softly, without response.

“They told me you tried to call MI6.”

Alex pushed himself up into a seated position against the headrest of his bed. He looked at Yassen with disinterest. “Has anyone been unkind?” Yassen asked. When no response was forthcoming, he continued, “You can tell me if anyone hurts you.”

“No,” Alex said listlessly, “No one tried to hurt me.”

“Then what?”

Alex’s serious brown eyes peered at him then glanced away. “No one talks to me anymore. They stopped Jin from seeing me.”

“I’m talking to you,” Yassen pointed out.

“You’re usually gone.”

That was true. Yassen’s latest mission had run into complications, and he’d been gone longer than he’d preferred.

“How long has it been you talked to someone?”

“Besides the doctors and nurses?” Alex shrugged. There was something tired behind the gesture.

“I can arrange for someone to talk to you.”

Alex laughed. It was a hollow sound, and Yassen ignored the twinge of guilt he felt hearing it.

“You tried to call MI6,” Yassen said again.

“I successfully called MI6. I just didn’t get to continue the conversation.”

All the worse. “I’m in charge of your punishment.”

It was impossible to see emotion in Alex’s face. “What’s it going to be this time? A whipping? Cut off a finger? Some other horror? I can’t stop you.”

“No one here has a desire to see you hurt,” Yassen said, ignoring the people who very much would enjoy seeing Alex hurt. There were enough enterprising leaders in SCORPIA to see the value in treating Alex well.

“Then what?”

“I’m taking your books and DVDs. You’ll get them back with good behavior.” A loss in entertainment wouldn’t kill the boy.

“You know I don’t get cable, right?”

“Yes.”

Alex smiled mirthlessly. “The prison gets more prisonlike.”

“You aren’t in prison.”

“So I can leave?”

Yassen shook his head. No. They both knew that. It wouldn’t suit the board’s needs if Alex went home, regardless of whether he rejoined MI6 when he was back in England.

“It was good to see you, Alex,” Yassen said. He resisted the urge to show Alex affection. He was meant to be punishing him. “Someone will come for your entertainment soon.” Yassen stood, and for the first time Alex showed emotion – this time suppressed shock.

“You’re leaving?”

“I’m going to rest, after my last job.”

“Yassen, stay,” Alex said, not quite pleading.

It was the first time Alex had called him by name.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, little one.”

When Yassen stopped at the door and looked back, Alex was sitting with his eyes closed, his face blank.


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies, this will need to be 3 chapters instead of the original planned 2.

Months ago, Jones had sent one of her top agents into a situation that demanded secrecy and skill to prevent a potential bloodbath. And if the situation required it, she knew she would be down an agent. That was the cost of protecting the world, and she would incur that cost, even as she hated to think of visiting another sparsely attended funeral.

The situation had gone wrong. Bodies had been retrieved, but not the body of her agent.

Jones hadn’t worried – Alex Rider had always been brave, and he had the tool necessary to protect the information he held.

And then the situation unfolded. The information MI6 would have killed to protect had been compromised. And still Alex Rider didn’t emerge, nor did stories of his demise.

It was unfortunate that the story of a boy who had once been so brave would end as the story of a man who had either stopped himself or been prevented from doing what was necessary to save lives.

The file in MI6 marked ‘Alex Rider’ listed ‘presumed dead’ as his status, and had for months by the time the call to Jones’ personal cell came through. And then she’d been able to hear him, almost ill-sounding, and the pieces had fit together. Her agent wasn’t dead; he was compromised.

SCORPIA didn’t forgive or forget. If they had Alex hostage, they would have contacted MI6 by now. Alex must be cooperating with them.

Jones felt an emotion close to sadness that night when she went to bed, thinking of the boy Alex had been once. It was always a tragedy when good agents defected.

Better to die a hero, as the saying went. Especially in the intelligence world.

\--

“Do you want tea?” Yassen asked, knowing Alex wouldn’t respond.

The young man lay in bed, arms crossed, face buried in his pillow. He was dressed and his bed was made, but from Alex’s pose he could have been in pajamas, with his sheets pulled over him.

Alex murmured something into his pillow.

“You’re doing better, if you were well enough to make a call.” Every time Yassen visited, Alex’s state had improved. Only two months ago it had been rare to hear Alex talk.

The young man’s head turned so that could see Yassen, although he stayed pressed against the bed and his head was laying against his pillow. Alex was quiet, looking at him.

Yassen could wait. Alex would talk, or he wouldn’t. There were no wrong choices here.

More time passed in silence. “It’s time for my dinner,” Yassen said, after a time. “I can come back afterwards, if you want.”

The responding gesture might have been a shrug. Yassen reached out and felt Alex’s forehead with the back of his hand. “You don’t have a fever. You should get out of bed. Exercise.”

“I did that earlier,” Alex muttered.

Alex would benefit from more exercise.

It was probably futile to tell him that.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Yassen promised.

\--

“Your books and movies will be brought back soon,” Yassen told him. “After I know that you won’t be so reckless anymore.”

Alex stared at Yassen, knowing that would never happen. SCORPIA might grow wiser and Alex might not have any more opportunities to call MI6, but it wouldn’t stop him from trying. Although it wouldn’t be hard to keep another call from happening. All SCORPIA needed to do was send in more seasoned recruits than Jin. Or not send in anyone at all. And Alex could rot here alone, weak and still tired enough of the time, and full of trapped fears and anxieties.

“How was working out this morning?” Yassen asked, as if he really cared. And for whatever reason, the man did care.

“How long are you here this time?” Alex asked instead of answering. He hated that he hoped the answer wasn’t ‘I leave tomorrow’.

“A few more days.”

“Where were you last time?”

“You don’t need to hear about it.”

Who was Alex going to tell?

“You can make it up,” Alex responded, not sure whether it would help or hurt to hear about places he couldn’t go – might never go again.

“I’ll tell you about a place I went a long time ago.” And Yassen did, launching into a story about a man – now dead, from the way Yassen spoke of him – that had once tracked a jaguar in Brazil just for a bet.

It was a good story. Not good enough to distract from reality, however. And Yassen’s descriptions of the rainforest didn’t help.

Alex hadn’t seen a tree in months.

He said as much, only to watch guilt cross Yassen’s face, and he wished he hadn’t mentioned it. He wondered if Yassen even had control of where Alex was kept. What exact terms were in the contract Yassen had signed? In a way, Yassen was no freer than Alex from SCORPIA’s control.

Yassen still got to leave.

Alex was well aware that his life now came down to three rooms and a hallway. And that wasn’t likely to change soon. SCORPIA knew it would be a risk to allow Alex more freedom.

“Soon,” Yassen said.

Maybe if Alex was an optimist, he could believe that either of them thought nature would be waiting for Alex in the near future.

\--

That winter was a long one. Yassen took four more short term assignments over the months, the first one for just a few days and the last one for a month and a half. Between each job he would visit SCORPIA’s base to rest, hear his new assignment, and visit Alex.

After the first assignment, Yassen had the books and movies returned to Alex’s room. Alex watched wordlessly while a maid carted the entertainment back into the room.

“Let someone know if you want anything,” Yassen had said.

“I want to go home,” Alex responded, in one of the last times Yassen heard those words.

Later Yassen heard that Alex had requested an Xbox.

Before he left for his second assignment Yassen arranged with the head of the base to have a therapist visit the young man every other day. He was even able to arrange, after a long period of negotiations, to get Alex occasional visits to the compound’s courtyard, with heavy supervision. Alex would enjoy that, Yassen suspected. And he made sure the physical therapy would continue indefinitely – it would be good for Alex to leave his room at least once a day even without the physical benefits. The reports from the physiotherapist went to an email address set up under the name of one of Yassen’s covers, and he monitored Alex’s progress when he had the chance to check in on the situation at base.

Each time Yassen was at base, he visited Alex daily. The visits were mostly quiet, with Yassen willing to talk, and Alex increasingly less so.

Alex’s therapist told him that the young man didn’t speak often, and when he did, it was responses to trivial questions.

When Yassen visited Alex before his final assignment of the winter, he brought two birthday gifts for Alex’s twenty-first birthday: a nice bottle of vodka, and a copy of a book teaching Arabic (a language Alex had once mentioned he’d be interested in learning). Alex had thanked him quietly, and flipped through the pages of the book joylessly. The next morning Yassen had stopped by Alex’s room to find him half-drunk and crying.

_Alex was alive._ Yassen reminded himself when visited Alex’s room for the first time after his last mission of the winter, to find Alex sitting in the corner of the room, still in his pajamas and wrapped in his bed’s comforter, with deep circles under his eyes.

“Have you been sleeping?” Yassen had asked, because what more could he say to Alex, looking at the state of him.

And Alex had looked at him – through him, almost, as if Yassen wasn’t real or was real but it didn’t make a difference – and responded with a single, empty laugh.

\--

Yassen was leaving again tomorrow. Not that it mattered. Time filtered into this room in an uneven pattern, and for now Alex wasn’t alone. Soon he would be, again, and for however long until Yassen was back for another short break between this job and whatever job he had next.

Alex shivered. It wasn’t cold.

Next to him, sitting against the wall on the floor as Alex was, Yassen hesitated, stopping his recital of the book Alex was supposedly reading. In truth, Alex had no idea what was happening in the book as a whole or in the chapters Yassen had been reading aloud to him. Focusing was hard these days.

Yassen pushed a hand through Alex’s hair. “You need a haircut.”

“Sure,” Alex agreed. Another SCORPIA man with a sharp object near Alex’s head. At this point, it might even be a relief if it turned out that the barber had a grudge against Alex’s earlier life, and decided to end it all.

They were quiet, Yassen glancing sideways at him, uncertain. Alex was adrift in unfocused thoughts, and he didn’t start conversations anymore anyway.

“How are you?” Yassen asked, softly.

“Why didn’t it kill me?”

Alex hadn’t known he was going to ask that question. From Yassen’s frozen expression, the man hadn’t expected it either.

“Sorry,” Alex said. He wasn’t sorry, not really, but some part of Alex that wasn’t unmoored from reality knew the question was rude. That Yassen was giving up a lot to keep Alex alive, whether or not Alex wanted to be alive anymore. “You can keep reading.”

Yassen stayed that night until long after Alex fell asleep, leaning against Yassen’s shoulder after dozing off, having finished pretending to listen to the story.

\--

Alex never knew how long he would be alone again when Yassen left. He never knew if Yassen would come back. If someday, instead of his regular therapist entering the room, it would be a man with a gun who was going to tell Alex some clichéd expression about SCORPIA never forgetting before ending this for good.

How long did SCORPIA expect Alex’s captivity to keep Yassen in line? Another year? Another five? Until Yassen made a mistake and there was no more need for Alex?

Yassen had to have an end point where this situation would end – perhaps his contract was only a few years, and then Alex would be released while Yassen faded into retirement. Alex would be twenty-five, perhaps, and by then far too broken to ever cause problems again.

Jones wouldn’t believe that he hadn’t rejoined SCORPIA. Or she would believe the truth, but she wouldn’t care. And a broken version of Alex might one day be persuaded to start speaking truths the general public didn’t need to hear, not according to MI6. So, Alex would disappear.

These thoughts occupying Alex’s mind were poison sinking into his head, more dangerous than cyanide, and breaking him in a way that the actual cyanide hadn’t because he couldn’t talk to anyone to escape them. He didn’t dare tell his therapist, because his therapist would run back to SCORPIA and report that breaking Alex down was working. These were thoughts he couldn’t tell Yassen because the man was doing all that he could to keep Alex alive, and he didn’t need to hear that Alex didn’t want to deal with life’s problems anymore. Not like this.

One day, after doing yet another endless search for the bugs he knew by now weren’t in the room, Alex whispered the thoughts to himself while he stared at the tv, allowing the music of the show to drown out his hushed confession. The words made him feel better for a moment, until they didn’t bring him to the courtyard that day as scheduled because it was raining, and it took all Alex had not to beg the messenger to let him go out anyway, even without an umbrella, because it had been months – nearly a year – since he had felt rain. Instead, he asked, restrained, if he could still go out, hoping desperately that he wouldn’t be refused. The messenger had gone to check and the higher ups at the base had said yes. For a few minutes.

Everything would be easier if SCORPIA at least hurt him. Treated him unkindly. Taunted him. Then Alex would maybe have a reason to end it – a reason that made sense. Fear of torture was legitimate. Lack of freedom was not, not when everything Alex asked for – within reason – was brought to him, and if he requested a certain food – which he never bothered with anymore, because it all tasted the same – it was prepared as soon as he asked.

The rain fell on Alex’s face, outside in the courtyard, and Alex watched a bird take shelter under the awning of the roof. His eyes stung as he ignored the reason why. He wished he was that small blackbird instead SCORPIA’s pet, treated well and watched with interest; a caged bird forbidden from flying. And Alex wondered why the saying said the caged bird sang. There wasn’t any point.

\--

Yassen had been working with, and at times against, the director of the compound for his entire last break to get Alex outside of the compound for a brief while. Alex would be guarded, of course, and it would only be for a short time. But if it went well, there might be more opportunities to have Alex taken out of the compound soon.

The director finally agreed to it on Yassen’s last day before he left for a brief assignment as an emissary of SCORPIA to a growing gang in Russia. Yassen hadn’t told Alex about the trip in case something happened to put an end to the idea. But finally, the director called Yassen and said he would have his men take Alex to the local park that day, and Yassen had allowed himself a small smile. Alex would need it.

When the director had called back only three hours later, Yassen had known the news would be bad. 

Alex had knocked a man out and tried to run.

It would have been a hopeless idea from the beginning, and Yassen’s heart dropped as he wondered if Alex had realized how futile his attempt to escape would prove. Whether Alex had planned it to be futile.

Alex’s physiotherapy would be ending, the director said. Yassen could hardly disagree. It hadn’t been needed for a while, anyway, but it had gotten Alex out of his room.

Alex would also be punished. Specifically, he would be beaten. Given a reminder that leaving was not a choice.

Yassen hadn’t argued with that judgement either. His case against hurting Alex wouldn’t have been heard. The director knew Yassen was attached. Yassen’s attachment was the only reason that Alex was permitted to live. And, considering how valuable a hostage Alex was, a beating was probably the right punishment – punishing with low risk of turning fatal.

_Had Alex hoped the punishment would be somewhat more lethal than a beating?_ a small voice in his head questioned. Yassen shut that voice down immediately. The boy who had stopped both Sayle and Cray at fourteen wouldn’t give up over such a small matter as not being allowed to go to the place he claimed as home. Besides, Alex didn’t ask to go home anymore. Alex wanted to return to MI6, likely, and little more.

Yassen repeated that line to himself many times over the next few days. Maybe if he repeated it often enough, he would believe it.

\--

Crawley brought the two reports to Jones, paperclipped together. Jones read the first report with pursed lips, not sure she believed the source, but the second document gave her pause.

She glanced up at Crawley. “You’re sure that the source is telling the truth?”

“He seems to be.”

The first report was on a fax sent to MI6 from the Chinese intelligence services. Apparently, they had planted a spy in SCORPIA under the codename ‘Jin’. After the Chinese had retrieved Jin from their operation, he had given some information that the Chinese were willing to share with MI6. The fact that the Chinese authorities were willing to share anything was surprising enough to Jones. The details of what Jin had said were more so: one of his assignments, while stationed in the compound in Greece, had been to socialize with a young man. A British man with blond hair and brown eyes, who was being held as a hostage against a SCORPIA operative.

Even before the name Alex Rider was mentioned in the fax, Jones knew to who the Chinese operative was referring.

The second report was much more recent. A captured SCORPIA agent revealed information on the Greek compound, and included in the map he’d drawn was a room labelled simply ‘Prisoner’s room.”

If there was any possibility that Alex had been telling the truth – that he was a hostage to SCORPIA, and not a traitor working for their organization after all – then he needed to be rescued. He was far too useful to remain in SCORPIA’s holding cells forever.

And, Jones thought, the country owed Alex. She owed Alex, after spending so long believing the young man a traitor.

“We need to find out more,” she told Crawley. “And soon.”

\--

Usually, after arriving back at the compound, Yassen took his time to drop whatever bags he had off in his temporary room, knowing that Alex won’t go anywhere in the meantime. This time Yassen went straight to Alex’s room, dumping his bags in the hallway outside.

Alex didn’t appear surprised to see him. Alex’s face held no emotion at all, beyond perhaps tiredness.

Whoever had beaten Alex hadn’t avoided his face.

Not that they had a reason to avoid it. Alex wasn’t going anywhere, or going to see anyone who went outside of the compound except Yassen, and this was as much a lesson for Yassen as it was for Alex. _Keep your charge in line._

“How do you feel?” Yassen asked, gingerly moving Alex’s face to the side so his bruises could be seen better.

“Fine,” Alex said, distantly.

Yassen let go of Alex’s chin. “They hurt you worse than I expected.”

“They probably wanted to do that a long time ago."

“I can’t protect you if you insist on challenging them.”

“You can’t stop them anyway.”

“You’ve been safe,” Yassen responded, stung.

“Sure,” Alex agreed. He wouldn’t meet Yassen’s eyes.

Yassen stayed with Alex for a long period, but Alex didn’t say anymore before laying down to nap. Yassen watched the younger man doze in and out of a fitful sleep, and he worried.

This wasn’t what Yassen had intended when he’d gotten SCORPIA to spare Alex’s life.


	3. Part III

The bruises on Alex’s face were mottled yellow and brown when Yassen returned to SCORPIA’s compound. Yassen ignored the background noises from the television and Alex’s half-awake stare as he looked through the video games on the shelf, trying to find the one that Alex had once mentioned a passing interest in. Finding the case, Yassen turned to Alex, holding it up. “Do you want to play? I haven’t seen you use your gaming system recently.”

Alex didn’t point out what Yassen already knew - Yassen had barely been in the compound recently. Instead, the boy said voicelessly, “I didn’t think you’d be back this soon.”

“I was just on a short vacation, not on a job.”

“Hope it was nice,” Alex said.

His tone wasn’t sarcastic. Alex hadn’t had a dry tone around Yassen in months. With a painful stab, Yassen realized that it had been at least that long since Alex had smiled, and even before then his smile hadn’t reached his eyes.

“Are you leaving soon?” Alex asked, looking at the television.

Yes, but perhaps not in a way that Alex expected.

“I’m going to stay here for a while today,” Yassen answered. “Do you have any other movies you’d like to watch?” Movies that didn’t involve unnecessary violence. Alex had seen enough of that in life already.

“You can watch anything. I’ve seen them all before.”

“Would you prefer a book?”

Alex shrugged.

“Turn that off,” Yassen instructed. He chose the book of fairy tales, not because he preferred them but because Alex might be familiar enough with the stories to at least understand the plot if he occasionally tuned into what Yassen was reading.

They were in the middle of a particularly grim retelling of an already gory children’s tale when the shooting began. Alex started, looking towards the door with the most awareness he’d shown in the past dozen times Yassen had seen him. “Get down,” Yassen instructed, grabbing Alex by the arm, and pulling him behind the bed.

Alex sank to the floor, quiet. Yassen knelt beside him, facing the door, and keeping a hand on Alex’s head, ready to push the young man even closer to the ground if needed.

Outside the door, shots fired, sporadic at first and then rapid-fire, as SCORPIA was invaded by the country they’d been residing in for five years now. Alex sat frozen, with his hands closed into tight fists.

By the time the special forces were banging on their door, SCORPIA’s base had already fallen.

“We’re coming in. Back away from the door with your hands on your head,” a gruff voice called in English through the door, after announcing that the compound had surrendered. Alex followed the directions. Yassen, after leaving one of his guns on the ground in a show of surrender, did the same.

Five heavily armed and armored men came into the room, weapons drawn, only seconds later. Three of them walked to the bed, surrounding Alex and Yassen.

“Alex Rider?” One of the men asked Alex in a thick Greek accent. As if the young man with bruises all over his face could be anyone other than the one Yassen had described yesterday in their meeting.

If Yassen correctly remembered the name of the man speaking, it was Adrian.

Alex, quiet and stunned, looked at Yassen.

“Tell the truth,” Yassen chided, softly.

“Yes.” Alex cleared his throat. “I’m Alex Rider.”

Adrian lowered his weapon and offered a hand to Alex. “We’re going to get you to safety, Alex. Come with me.”

“Go with him,” Yassen told Alex. “It will be alright.”

“I can’t – “ Alex began as Adrian took his hand and hauled Alex to his feet. “I haven’t left, they’ll kill me if they find me. I can’t leave!”

“It’s all right,” Yassen repeated.

Alex looked to him now, pale, and pleaded with the men surrounding them, “Don’t hurt him.”

“We’re not going to hurt him,” Adrian reassured. “You can see him soon. Let’s go.”

Yassen stayed on the ground with his back pressed against the bed and hands on his head, listening in as Alex was escorted out of the room.

“He’ll be ok,” another man told him.

“I know he will be,” Yassen replied.

\--

No one would tell Alex what was happening, but in the meantime, Alex had traded one prison, with a set of rules he’d grown to know and accept, for a very different prison, where he didn’t know the expectations at all.

He had been brought to a government building via secured car first, and then after an intensive interview where Alex refused to speak, he’d been bundled into a different car and brought to a penthouse hotel suite. He’d been shut in a bedroom off the main suite, and now there were men guarding the door to the room.

It was quite an expensive hotel, from the looks of things. Despite the different layout and the lack of a fully stocked media library, the room wasn’t entirely different from his SCORPIA prison.

A day passed. Alex spent most of the time by the windows, staring down at the people below, and up at the sky above. He hadn’t seen the sky this much in what felt like a year, and he hadn’t seen the night sky at all in months. For a few minutes he turned on the television and listened to the news, but he’d turned it off moments later. Too much had happened in the world in the last seven months, and he felt overwhelmed trying to absorb it all at once.

On the second day, two men came into the bedroom and tried to talk to him. Alex listened to their questions, and asked twice for answers of his own. By the time that the two men left, no one knew any more information than they’d known before the interview started.

Yassen entered his room on the third day.

It wasn’t entirely a surprise. The man who’d taken Alex here had said back at SCORPIA’s compound that they would see each other soon. Alex hadn’t expected that the scenario would so resemble being back in the compound, though – Alex imprisoned, guarded, and unclear as to what was happening in the world. Yassen walking in freely, calm and stoic.

Not that he’d known what to expect. Perhaps he’d thought Yassen would be the one locked up.

Yassen closed the door so that they were alone, and then turned to consider him. “How are you feeling?” the man asked.

Alex couldn’t hide the war of emotions on his face. He didn’t know how he was feeling.

The older man nodded. “That will get better, in time.”

“What will get better?” Alex asked. His head hurt. He wasn’t used to this much change, or this much natural light in a room.

Yassen crossed the room to sit beside Alex on the couch. “Everything, I imagine.” When Alex was silent, Yassen expanded his answer. “Not being in prison.”

He was still in prison. “They won’t let me leave.”

“They will soon. After you talk to the intelligence agencies that worked to free you, and after MI6 has arranged for your return home.”

Alex shook his head. “Jones thinks I’m a terrorist. She’s not going to believe I was a hostage. She didn’t believe me when I called her.”

“Things have changed.”

Alex waited.

Yassen shook his head ruefully. “Someone passed on information about SCORPIA holding a prisoner in their compound. And then I defected, under the condition that you were taken care of. And they’ve had a chance to interview you, and they saw enough in that time. Believe me, no one thinks you’re an agent for SCORPIA.”

Yassen had defected?

“What do you mean, they saw enough?”

Familiar blue eyes took him in. Familiar blue eyes that Alex could now read, to some degree, easily enough. And Alex wanted to defend himself. Say that he wasn’t whatever they thought he was – scarred, or catatonic, or suffering from PTSD.

“They saw that you haven’t been yourself,” Yassen said, carefully.

No, he hadn’t been. Not for a long time, not since before Jones had forced him to put a fake tooth filled with cyanide in his mouth.

“Tomorrow they’re going to bring you in front of a panel,” Yassen said then. “There are people there representing a coalition of agencies across Europe. They’ll ask you questions. Speak honestly, and then they’ll be done, and we can arrange your flight home.”

“Will you be there?”

“They’ll want to hear what you have to say in a secure environment.”

Alex took a shaky breath. How many people would be at the panel? It had been a long time since he had been around more than two people in a room for any longer than a few moments, not counting when the special forces had transferred him to this hotel.

“It will be alright.”

“I’m not afraid,” Alex returned.

The corner of Yassen’s mouth turned up. “I didn’t think you were.”

In the silence that followed, Alex’s attention drifted again to the window. Across the street was an office building, and Alex could see a woman walking by a window.

It was amazing that the world was still continuing, even after months of not being there when Alex had needed it.

It hurt that the world had continued without him, and it hurt that he had no one around to notice that he’d been gone.

Even if MI6 let Alex continue his life, no one would be there to celebrate his return.

Yassen shifted, as if he were going to stand. As if he were going to leave.

Alex didn’t want to be left alone. “Can you stay?”

“Yes,” Yassen replied, after a second of thought.

“Ok,” Alex said, hiding his relief. “I’ll even listen to a story, if you want.”

“You haven’t before,” Yassen observed.

“I did.” Surprised at his own defensiveness, Alex was tempted to smile. It wasn’t a familiar temptation, not anymore. “Not well, maybe, but I listened.”

“Alright,” Yassen agreed. There was something odd in his expression, and Alex tried not to analyze it too closely. He wasn’t sure he wanted to understand his life from someone else’s perspective. “You listened, but not well. Would you like to listen more closely this time?”

“It depends on the story.”

“What type of story would you like?”

“I don’t care. Something funny, or with a happy ending.” Alex had enough experiences with sad stories in his own life.

“A funny story with a happy ending,” Yassen mused. “I’ll tell you one my grandmother told me, a long time ago.”

He was still in prison, at least for a while. But Alex had been in worse prisons than this one right now.

\--

The panel had taken most of the day, and would continue over the next week, based on the schedule he’d seen. The coalition of intelligence agencies working together to take down SCORPIA needed a lot of information, and they wanted it now.

Yassen would be taking part in the panel soon, but this afternoon’s session was reserved for Alex, although Yassen knew Alex wouldn’t be able to give the men and women on the panel much of the information they wanted.

While Alex was being interviewed, Yassen read a book patiently outside the conference room. Two of the security guards kept a close eye on him.

He wasn’t at risk here – right now, the information he possessed on SCORPIA was too valuable for any of the security personnel to allow Yassen to come to harm. Not unless they had been bribed or had undisclosed allegiances, but Yassen had inspected the list of personnel closely in the past days.

It was only when the door to the room opened and the people inside began to exit that Yassen closed the book and looked up.

Alex wasn’t in the stream of people leaving. Yassen waited until the seemingly last intelligence official left the room before he entered it, followed closely by one of the men who had been watching him.

Inside the room, Alex was still sitting at the large oval-shaped table. He looked tired and lost, and every one of his only twenty-one years.

“Alex,” Yassen said. “Let’s go.”

The two men assigned to Alex joined the man trailing Yassen as they walked to the stairs. “Where are we going?” Alex asked when they started down the stairs to the lobby, instead of up to the suite Alex was staying in.

“Dinner.”

Yassen led the group to the hotel’s restaurant. Alex looked around the room warily as Yassen and Alex took a table a few meters away from the men in their entourage. “Almost everyone in the room is with the intelligence services of one country or another,” Yassen said, unsure if that would reassure Alex.

“There’s a lot of people here,” Alex returned in a low confession.

Counting the waitstaff, there were close to fifty people in the restaurant that Yassen could see. With most of the people in the restaurant knowing who they were and with Alex’s face still healing, the two of them received an unusual number of glances from the other patrons in the room.

Compared to the past few months, this would be a change for Alex.

“That was going to happen eventually.” Yassen studied the young man across from him. “But I can take you back to your room whenever you want.”

“No. I’m alright.”

Anyone hoping to overhear any personal secrets by listening in on them would be disappointed. Yassen had seen signs of life in Alex yesterday, but the process wasn’t going to be quick. And Alex was clearly worn out from the panel. So the two sat mostly in silence, with Alex alternating between staring uncertainly around the room and fixing his gaze on the table, all the while taking deep breaths in and out.

When dinner arrived, Yassen attempted to start the conversation. “They told me Jones will arrive in two days, to arrange your trip home.”

“Great.” Alex pushed noodles around his plate.

“You can be done with all of this,” Yassen promised, knowing that this promise should have been fulfilled seven years ago. Better yet – Alex would never have been thrust into MI6’s problems in the first place.

Alex grimaced.

“I mean it.”

“I always chose to work for them, eventually. And I know too much. They won’t just let me live my life.”

“I’m not sure you would be their best agent, at the moment.”

Yassen hadn’t meant his words harshly. From Alex’s lack of reaction, the words were received as intended.

“They’ll wait until I’m back on my feet,” Alex replied later. “I don’t have anywhere else to go, anyway.”

Another time, when they weren’t surrounded by potential foes to Yassen’s retirement plans, Yassen would have to make sure Alex knew he would be welcome in Russia at any point. Not that Yassen would have a simple retirement, not while evading the remnants of SCORPIA.

Through more than one person, John Rider’s legacy had led to SCORPIA’s downfall. Whatever was left of the organization wouldn’t forget that easily.

“You’re strong. You’ll be alright.”

“Was I strong before or after the cyanide poisoning?”

“You were strong every day you survived circumstances that others would not.”

Alex smiled wryly. “What else was I going to do? Let them kill me? Kill myself?”

The thought had crossed Yassen’s mind.

“I wasn’t going to,” Alex said, reading his face.

“I’m glad.”

Hopefully, by now Alex was glad that he was still here too.

\--

The first meeting with Jones went better than Alex expected.

She didn’t apologize for the cyanide capsule, but she did say it was good to see him alive. That was something. She even told him that Jack had asked about him – repeatedly, and often, even after MI6’s official response was that he was assumed dead. Jack knew too much to assume death without a body by now.

Alex had been afraid Jack would just assume he could now go undercover for months without contacting her. Apparently, Jack didn’t think Alex was so far gone. Alex had smiled then, knowing that Jack was still waiting to hear from him.

Yassen was allowed in the meeting with Jones. Perhaps it shouldn’t have shocked him. After all, the meeting could only occur because Yassen was willing to spill SCORPIA’s secrets.

In the end, Alex had to admit, the main reason the meeting went down without a hitch was Yassen and Jones’ complete coldness to each other acting as a counterbalance to the other. When Jones had asked Alex why he had been alive to be taken to SCORPIA, Yassen had intervened to ask when intelligence services sent their prized young agents to die for a single mission. When neither Jones nor Yassen had backed down, the matter rested. And when Alex had, hesitantly, asked how he knew he wouldn’t disappear into a hole in the ground the next time he refused a mission, Yassen had jumped into the conversation to state that Jones wouldn’t offer Alex any more missions that could kill him – if she offered him any more missions at all - unless she wanted to contend with Yassen spending the rest of his life hunting every MI6 agent he could find. And Jones, with her lips pursed, had agreed that Yassen’s terms were fair.

There had been more details. Questions. Arrangements. Yassen wanted Alex to have a permanent security detail, and Jones agreed. By the last half of the meeting Alex could barely keep his eyes open, until Yassen called for a temporary end for everyone to rest for the night. They all knew the ‘everyone’ being referred to was Alex, but the façade that others were also worn out by five in the afternoon was polite enough.

The next morning Yassen had Alex memorize two addresses and a phone number where he could expect to find help in an emergency, as well as a phone number not for emergencies. It had taken Alex longer to memorize the addresses than he’d expected, although Yassen hadn’t appeared surprised.

The second meeting with Jones went smoother than the first. Not for the first time, Alex was grateful to have Yassen on his side.

The conference of intelligence services working to disband SCORPIA ended two days later. Jones had already returned to Britain by then, leaving a junior officer to join Alex in his flight home.

Alex was given increasing amounts of freedom to explore the area around the hotel, although the compromise reached by his government and the Greek intelligence services required that everywhere Alex went, he was accompanied by two intelligence officers, one from each country. Yassen usually joined as well. Although he spoke less within earshot of the agent, Alex still felt better that he was by someone who knew him when the tourists crowded around.

And finally, Alex found himself at breakfast with Yassen, with thirty minutes left until the older man had to leave to catch a train.

“I’m still tired all the time,” Alex confessed as he ignored the food on his plate. “I want to sleep. I just woke up and I want to go back to bed already.”

“That will get better too,” Yassen said calmly.

“I don’t feel comfortable around people.”

Yassen looked at him.

“I know.” Alex imitated, only half facetious, “ _It will get better_.”

“It will.”

Alex picked up his fork and stabbed his omelet half-heartedly. “What about you?”

“What about me?” Yassen echoed.

“You never told me why they didn’t arrest you.”

“For information.”

“They could have arrested you after you’d told them everything,” Alex said. Even if the intelligence agencies involved had promised Yassen freedom in exchange for information, that didn’t mean they were telling the truth. Intelligence services, in his experience, had no qualms about lying to criminals. _Or children._

“Ah,” Yassen said. “That would be it. I have quite a lot of information I’m waiting to release until once I am safely out of their grasps.”

It made sense. Alex should have expected a similar answer.

“Will you be alright?” Alex asked. “You know. On your own. With people that want to kill you.”

“I can handle myself. So long as I continue to hear that you’re doing well, I’ll enjoy my retirement.”

Alex frowned. “I have my own share of enemies.”

“You may not believe me, but you can handle yourself as well.”

Once, Alex might have agreed with Yassen.

Yassen seemed to read his thoughts. “If you need help, you know how to reach me. Or if you need to talk to someone.”

Yes, he knew how to reach Yassen. The older man had quizzed Alex on the ways to contact him three or four times now, and each time Alex had recited the addresses and phone numbers perfectly.

“Thanks,” Alex said quietly. For saving his life, and keeping him company, and for everything.

“Little Alex.” Yassen held his gaze. “There’s no giving up. You still have your life to lead.”

Alex nodded, biting his lip as he did.

He knew that he wouldn’t give up. He also knew the road to recovery was still going to take a long time. Seven months of hopeless depression didn’t disappear overnight.

Yassen’s expression softened. “You know where to go to get away.”

“I don’t know Russian,” Alex said, as Yassen stood to leave. It was a stupid complaint, all things considered.

Judging from Yassen’s amused expression, the man agreed.

Yassen brushed the strands of Alex’s hair from his face.

“Bye,” Alex whispered, not ready to admit that he wasn’t ready to be alone again, not yet. And Yassen had a train to catch.

“Call me when you get home,” Yassen told him.

Then Alex was alone, save for the agent two tables away.

\--

_There’s no giving up._

It had been a mantra that Alex had believed once, back when he was young.

Technically he was still young. But he didn’t feel young when he was laying in bed, tired to the bone or asleep for fourteen hours of the day.

The therapist MI6 set him up with was exactly as nice as the therapist who had visited Alex in captivity, and Alex told her exactly as little as he’d told SCORPIA’s therapist. The routine was still nice, as he settled back into a life of freedom.

Jack stayed with him for a while. They hadn’t lived together for years by then, but something in Alex’s expression the first time they had talked post-Alex returning to London must have told Jack she was needed. She brought three large suitcases and settled in for a few months. It was comforting to not be alone in the house.

Yassen was doing well. The man wouldn’t reveal many details about his new life to Alex over the phone, but he listened to what Alex told him. And Yassen repeated stories that he’d told Alex once, when he’d been mostly confined to a bed and not in the mental space to hear the man’s words.

_There’s no giving up._

Alex repeated the words to himself when he needed them, and when he didn’t.

Slowly, he got better.

Regular exercise outdoors helped. Jack and Yassen helped. Being able to decide his own life helped.

_There’s no giving up._

He wasn’t out of the woods yet. There were still days he didn’t see a point to life, even now that he wasn’t confined to a room in a terrorist compound where almost no one talked to him. Days where he looked around and remembered his entire family was dead, and of the two people he talked to regularly, one was a wanted assassin who had been responsible for the death of the man who’d raised him. There were days he walked down streets he’d never been down before just to lose the agents that he knew probably weren’t really trying to kidnap him to put him in a cell to rot until he was ready to do whatever MI6 asked.

Maybe he wasn’t ever going to be out of the woods, not truly.

It didn’t matter. He’d bitten down on a pill that was meant to kill him and experienced the metallic taste of almonds, and he’d survived. He still had his life ahead of him, and he wasn’t giving up.


End file.
